Cuddles and Closeness

I loved these times the absolute most. Our hearts would beat together with just our chests between, I would feel her wriggle at times, but mostly she would sleep, the most relaxed she would ever be. I would give everything to have another of these cuddles. Bliss work hard to drive 'family centred care', and a huge part of that is skin to skin cuddles. just 1 hour of skin to skin cuddling can reduce stress hormone levels (that are insanely high in a premature baby separated from mum in an incubator) back to normal. They empower parents to ask and ensure nurses prioritise cuddles wherever possible - even for those babies on ventilators. in Chloe's 82 days, we only had 13 cuddles. I wish I had known earlier of the benefits and been brave enough to ask every day if we could do it. They were amazing for me, for my milk production, and for Chloe - she was always much better during and after cuddles.